The Fleshyard and Perdition Home Haunt present Dark Harvest: 2021 Review
Frosty’s Forest and Pumpkin Patch, Chino, CA
After a brief break, we jump back into the Halloween mode but make our way over to the Inland Empire, with the first of three San Bernandino / Riverside County haunts that we visited last weekend. First up is Dark Harvest, the rebrand of last year's Harvest of Horrors, located at Frosty's Forest and Pumpkin Patch in Chino.
It’s time to go to the fair!!! Well, a fear fair, sort of?
For those who recall, Harvest of Horrors was a collaboration between Perdition Home Haunt and The Fleshyard and was one of the few professional haunts that operated last season. A completely outdoor maze carved out of a cornfield, this fright field brought an old-school style of blood and guts and gore with a variety of horror themes and settings spread out through the sprawling agricultural trail.
Dark Harvest is less fun and more frights. And ferociousness.
This year, the haunt is back and under a new name, but the gruesome and grisly scenes remain and have actually been expanded. Indeed, this year's cornfield maze is longer and packs more scenes than last, and it's brimming with even more monsters waiting to terrify and terrorize.
Set in the back of the Frosty's Forest area, Dark Harvest awaits those brave souls who can make it through the pumpkin patch and carnival atmosphere, past the inflatable giant bounce houses and the glowing ferris wheel and the creaky Zipper ride, to the very far end of the property, where a simple tent and a booth marks the start of a fifteen-minute stroll of screams.
Even on light evenings, a line can build up at Dark Harvest. That is because the operators space out groups far apart, so that they're alone along the trail, with no one nearby to give away upcoming scenes or hear the blood-curdling screams. This might make for a longer wait for a set number of people compared to if they were at a theme park haunt, but it enables a much more intimately horrific experience.
The maze immediately delves into the graphic and gory, with a violent plane crash scene greeting guests who enter and round the first turn. A lone pilot sits, body parts mangled, face pulverized to a pulp. It's a taste of what's to come in this Perdition x Fleshyard production.
It’s a bloody affair at Dark Harvest. Fans of Perdition Home will expect this.
Guests going through the maze encounter numerous scenes of slaughter, including a hospital where the medical professionals seem to have become the depraved ones, a clown-infested colorful cornucopia of carnage, a realm haunted by fearsome pumpkin beasts, the horror of a space station infested by some brutal alien life form, a serial killer's den full of butchery, and more. Longtime fans of Perdition and The Fleshyard will recognize elements and settings from their past mazes.
In between the sets, there's an emotional push and pull between the sets and the trail. The bulk of the scares come at the scenes, which seem to be lit a little more vividly than last year and also contain steady ground that mitigates tripping hazards that might arise from the scares. Meanwhile, the cornfield offers an uneasy solace that hints at the fear to come but typically brings respite to the adrenaline and the startles--until it doesn't.
All sorts of unpleasant characters and brutal scenes await at Dark Harvest.
The shining highlight of last year and the aspect that continues to carry the strongest part of Dark Harvest this year is the talent, and they are fantastic throughout the maze. Utilizing a variety of intense scare tactics, from ambushes out of nowhere to intimidating aggression to unhinged unpredictability, the scareactors at Dark Harvest are unrelenting and savage. They take advantage of the nervous anticipation of guests approaching each scene, and they harness the apprehension into a vicious manipulation of shock and surprise.
The pacing of Dark Harvest seems to have also improved from last year. There seem to be twice as many scenes as before, spaced at half the distance of last year, allowing the adrenaline to be maintained instead of having the maze fall into lulls. Though each set seems a little more truncated compared to 2020, no scene ever feels prematurely short, and overall, it feels like the Perdition and Fleshyard folks have just managed to sow more into this year's experience out of sheer will!
The clowns are out to play—with body parts.
The end result is a traditional maze that is ghastly and lurid but maintains a thematic richness that is full of detail. Make no mistake about it, Dark Harvest is incredibly graphic, and it is not for the faint of heart or the feeble of mind. There is nothing slick and polished about this maze, no fancy theatrical effects, no overt use of sophisticated technology like projections or moving rigs. Dark Harvest is just a good ol' fashioned gorefest, and it is very effective and impactful in what it does. It's great to see that this haunt's second season has enhanced its strengths and tapered its weaknesses. The splattered fruits of Adam, Brandon, and Trevor's efforts are definitely starting to ripen.
Dark Harvest runs Thursdays through Sundays this month through Halloween Night, opening at 7pm each evening and running until 10pm on Thursdays and Sundays and till 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets are purchased on site and start at $30--a little steep compared to most single-attraction haunts, but also consider the length of the walkthrough experience, and that the price also includes admission into Frosty's Forest. Parking is free. Frosty's Forest and Pumpkin Patch is located at 14861 Ramona Ave, Chino, CA, 91710.
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
